


Sisters In Arms

by Luzula



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bittersweet, F/F, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 18:42:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13596051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luzula/pseuds/Luzula
Summary: She'd lost a fair amount of blood, and didn't afterwards remember much of the cart ride up the foothills, and then further up into the mountains. But she didn't sleep either. Her mind was hazy, wandering, as she looked up into the mist swirling around the treetops, and later into the cloth slung over the cart, when the mist thickened into rain. Every jolt of the cart thumped through her bones, pulsing in her wounded chest and shoulder. Or perhaps that was her heartbeat.





	Sisters In Arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meru/gifts).



> Meru, I hope you enjoy this and that it isn't too far from what you wanted! Thanks to Rachelmanija for beta reading.

She'd lost a fair amount of blood, and didn't afterwards remember much of the cart ride up the foothills, and then further up into the mountains. But she didn't sleep either. Her mind was hazy, wandering, as she looked up into the mist swirling around the treetops, and later into the cloth slung over the cart, when the mist thickened into rain. Every jolt of the cart thumped through her bones, pulsing in her wounded chest and shoulder. Or perhaps that was her heartbeat. 

But the pain was dull and distant. She thought they'd probably given her aro juice. 

"You thirsty?" a voice she didn't recognize asked her, and supported her to drink from a flask. "Sorry the ride is bumpy. We'll be there soon." 

She shivered, and felt hands spreading a blanket over her. Later, she felt the swaying motion as she was carried through the steep forest, lying in a cloth between two poles. The road didn't reach the villages; they had to stay hidden. The empire must not find them. 

The next time she woke, she looked up into a bamboo ceiling, and daylight came in through the door nearby. She felt weak, but tried to sit up. Pain stabbed her shoulder and she sank back down. A woman over by the other end of the room had turned and was coming toward her, but even before she turned, that first glimpse of her... 

Of course. Of course it would be her. 

"Mani," the woman said in greeting, standing over her bed now. 

"Soremi," Mani said, her voice rough and unused. She cleared her throat and coughed. Mistake. She lay back and breathed shallowly while the spike of pain receded. But it was almost a distraction, so she didn't have to look at Soremi. She shone too brightly, even now. 

"What happened?" Soremi asked. Her black hair was longer than the last time Mani had seen her, rough and uncombed and tied back from her face. 

"Arrow," Mani said. "They got it out, but...I'm not much use like this." She tried not to wonder how the raid had ended, not now when she couldn't do anything about it. 

Soremi's lips twitched. It wasn't funny, of course, but that last phrase was an old in-joke, from when they were young and growing up in neighboring villages. "Well, let me see," Soremi said. She looked to Mani for permission, then untied the strings of her shirt to expose the bandage. Thankfully her breast binding was still in place. 

Mani looked up into the ceiling and kept her face neutral. Ridiculous, the dreams she'd had of exactly this scene. It would probably not be helpful to blurt out _I promise I didn't get hurt so you'd take care of me. And I didn't join the fighters to impress you, either. That really wasn't the reason._ But it had been years since they had last talked about this, even obliquely. It would be entirely reasonable for Soremi to suppose that Mani's hopeless feelings for her had abated. Which they had not. 

"I need to get the bandage off," Soremi said, and fetched water for wetting it. "Sorry, this might hurt." 

It did. Looking at the wound, Soremi compressed her lips and looked worried. "I need to go in. Okay?"

Mani nodded. Soremi put her fingertips very lightly against the skin around the wound and closed her eyes. Mani let herself look at her then, at her sharp and concentrated expression, her lips slightly open, her lashes against her cheeks. She was probably not a handsome woman in a conventional way, but if so, Mani had long since lost any way to tell. 

It felt like Mani should be able to feel it somehow, that Soremi's awareness was deep inside her. She could not, and yet she still felt the knowledge of it as a kind of intimacy, mixed with a faint shame that she should enjoy that when it wasn't meant that way. 

Soremi blinked, surfacing, and Mani looked away from her face. "So?" she said. 

"Missed your lung. Which we knew already, of course, you'd be dead otherwise. But I don't like the feel of it, it's beginning to fester. Do you feel hot?"

"More like cold," Mani said, shivering a little. "And weak."

Soremi put a hand to her forehead. "Well, it comes to the same thing. I can't leave it like this. But I need to eat before I do anything about it, and so do you. I'll send you something, okay?" 

And she was gone. Mani lay there, feeling bereft, and yet relieved of the tension of Soremi's presence. She turned her head to look around. There was a screen separating her from the rest of the room, with swirling shapes of birds on it. It felt strange, to just lie here, with no responsibilities, no logistics to think through, no fire to make or dinner to cook, no tending her gear, no brothers or sisters in arms to argue or plan or wearily make her bed with. She missed them. She tried not to think that some of them might be dead. They never went into open confrontation--sabotage was their way, and covert raids on depots, and ambushes, trying to make the occupation more trouble than it was worth, so far out on the borders of the empire. But still, people died, or got hurt.

Soremi had changed, she thought. Part of what she had always loved about her had been her irreverent sense of humor. That spark in her had dimmed, as if worn down. But Mani still felt the tug in her heart. 

A serious boy-child, maybe ten years old, came in and gave her a bowl of soup and helped her sit up a little more. The soup was taro and a little chicken, but no rice. They must have been cut off from the lowland rice fields. The people who were still down there usually helped them; they suffered under the empire too, though they were not in open rebellion. 

***

Mani started awake at a sound. Somehow she had slept, and woke up feeling groggy and sore, with vivid images of dreams she didn't want to think about. Her heart pounded in alarm, a reflex that belonged elsewhere. The room was dim, and the evening outside was full of the sounds of crickets. A lamp flared up beside her, and she blinked, seeing Soremi's face. She breathed in, willing her heart to slow down. 

"Your father was here to see you, and Lun and Andi too. But I said they shouldn't wake you." 

Mani smiled, holding on to that thought. "Thanks. I mean, thanks for telling me they were here." More and more she felt like she needed that warp and weft of people in her life that she cared about. 

Soremi nodded. "So I'll have to go in again, and it'll take longer than last time. People don't usually feel it much." 

"Will you be okay? I mean..." 

Soremi waved this away. "I'm all right. It'll just make me a little tired." 

Mani had a feeling she knew what was wearing Soremi down. But the set of her mouth told her it would be no use to protest. Sure enough, Soremi narrowed her eyes at her. "This is how I serve, okay? You shoot arrows, I heal you when you get shot." 

Mani tried not to smile. "I didn't say anything." 

"Right." Soremi took a couple of pillows so she could sit more comfortably beside Mani's pallet. She parted Mani's shirt and carefully took off the new bandage, frowning down at the wound. 

"Is there anything I can do?" Mani asked. 

Soremi shook her head. "Not if you haven't trained for this for years." 

"What is it you're going to do? Can you explain it?" 

"It's hard to describe. You are made up of many very small parts, even your blood is. When a wound begins to fester, that's because there are tiny invaders in it, much too small to see. Your body is fighting them, that's what's makes the wound hot. I guess you could say that I help your body fight." 

"Will the wound be healed when you're done?" Mani asked as much because she wanted to hear Soremi talk more, as because she wanted to know. She found Soremi's surety in her craft compelling. 

"Hah." Soremi raised her eyebrows. "We wish. No, it'll just heal normally after that. I could speed it up, but it's a lot of work, and doing that for everyone...well. There aren't many of us healers, and far too many who need it." She rolled up her sleeves. "Now. Stop distracting me and we'll get to it." 

She put her fingertips lightly on Mani's skin again, and closed her eyes. Mani shivered, and goosebumps rose on her skin. 

She relaxed now that Soremi's eyes were not on her. She always felt a little bit tense when they talked, a self-defeating wish that she wouldn't say anything stupid, that she wouldn't be tongue-tied. It had felt better this time, though she still turned every turn of phrase over in her head to see if she'd sounded like an idiot. The knowledge that this was likely all in her head didn't make much difference. 

She drank her fill of Soremi's face, and the dip between her collarbones that peeked out in the opening of her shirt, and her short, strong, stubby fingers resting on Mani's chest. 

Could she feel what Soremi was doing? Mani closed her eyes and concentrated, but what she felt might as well be the heat of her own body around the wound. Despite just having slept, she dozed again. Her body was a battlefield, laid out like the lowland valleys and hills they were trying to win back, trying to ward off the invaders, arrows flying, hearts racing. 

She must have slept lightly, because she woke when Soremi removed her hands. 

"You'll be all right now," Soremi said. But she herself did not look all right. She looked drained and tired as she bandaged Mani's wound yet again. 

"And you?" she asked instead. 

Soremi gave her a wry smile. "I'm a bad healer. I don't care about healing myself."

The words struck Mani with pain, and she must have made a noise, because Soremi rubbed her hands over her face and said, "Sorry, I shouldn't say things like that. It upsets people. It's just--I go on because it's my duty, but I feel...empty. I can't imagine an end to this."

Mani wanted to reach out and touch her, to comfort her as best she could. "It's okay, you can say whatever you want. I'm sorry. I can't...I can't say we're going to win tomorrow, or ever." 

"No." Soremi leaned forward, letting her head hang down, her elbows propped on her knees. 

"I'd offer you a hug, if--" Mani didn't finish the sentence, and wished she hadn't said it. 

But improbably, Soremi looked up. "Actually, I--yes. Maybe it would help." She smiled that weary crooked smile again, and Mani's heart thudded hard in her chest. But she tried not to let it show in her face. She'd told Soremi once that being friends was enough for her, and that she wouldn't interpret that friendship as anything more. And she wouldn't. 

So she just spread her hands and smiled a little. "I'm not much good for holding anyone. So you'll have to do the hugging." She moved over on the pallet, rolling over on her good side, and Soremi lay down behind her, putting an arm around her. 

The feeling of Soremi's warm body against hers was like rain on a dry land. Mani soaked it up, feeling goosebumps rising on her skin. She had craved this, needed it, and never thought she would have it. And she didn't have it, not all she wanted, but it was enough. She rested in that feeling, silent. 

"Thanks," she whispered finally. It was probably not the right thing to say, but she didn't know what was. 

Soremi didn't reply. Her slow, even breathing was warm on Mani's neck. Mani smiled, content, and she, too, drifted into sleep.


End file.
